«&£j3i*  A'AiteS®" 


HarriaCE 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


GIFT  OF 

PROFESSOR 
GEORGE  R.  STEWART 


Z& 


MARRIAGE 


JANE  DEARBORN  MILLS 

(MRS.   JAMES  E.   MILLS) 


Author  of  "Leaves  from  a  Life-book  of  To-day"  and 
"Thb  Mother  Artist" 


SECOND    EDITION 


PHILADELPHIA: 

THE    NUNC    LICET    PRESS 
1906 


Copyright,  1905,  by 
The  Nunc  Licet  Press 


WM.  F.  FELL  CO.,  ELECTROTYPBRS  AND  PRINTERS 
1220  TO  1224  SANSOM  STREET,  PHILADELPHIA,  PA. 


Dedicated  to 
The  memory  of  my  Husband 


Prelude, 

These  words  upon  Marriage  are  such  as  only 
a  woman  could  speak.  The  "  Purity  "  word 
is  in  answer  to  the  numerous  public  teachings 
of  many  other  women  in  their  advocacy  of  the 
"  doctrine  of  sexlessness."  A  man's  opinions 
have  little  weight  against  their  reasoning. 

The  other  three  "  Words"  also,  are  thoughts 
from  the  woman's  standpoint.  There  is  no 
human  interest  so  necessary  to  be  presented 
by  both  the  man's  and  the  woman's  mind  as 
marriage,  for  none  concerns  them  both  so 
vitally. 

This  answers  the  question  in  advance,  which 
will  be  asked,  "Why  does  a  woman  write 
about  Marriage?"  The  present  writer  knows 
that,  already,  the  first  imperfect  edition  of  this 
book,  privately  published  and  circulated  with 
moderate  publicity,  has  cheered  some  of  the 
lives  in  homes  of  our  land.     This  has  led  to  the 


PRELUDE. 


request  for  the  renewal  of  the  exhausted  edition, 
and  she  has  wholly  rewritten  and  added  to  it, 
believing  that  it  probably  has  a  further  work 
to  do. 


Marriage  is  character-growth 
and  is  gained  through  service. 


MARRIAGE. 


ITS  PURITY. 

IN  these,  our  modern  days,  one  of  the  evils 
which  thoughtful  minds  are  seeking  to 
destroy  is  sexual  vice.  Many  men  and 
women  are  devoting  all  their  powers  to  the 
eradicating  of  one  form  or  another  of  this 
deadly  enemy  of  the  race.  Especially  is  the 
corrupting  of  the  children  a  hydraheaded 
monster,  eluding  every  effort  to  kill  all  of  him 
at  once.  Mothers,  fathers,  teachers,  and  other 
lovers  of  the  little  ones  are  giving  study,  time, 
money,  and  devotion  to  finding  ways  for  keep- 
ing children  from  impure  thoughts  and  acts. 
With  equal  earnestness  they  work  for  the  up- 
rooting of  this  evil  in  adult  living. 

The  adult  form  is  twofold, — that  outside  of 
marriage  and  that  within  its  legal  limits.  The 
latter  has  expression  in  the  bestiality  of  some 


IO  MARRIAGE. 


husbands,  but  it  has  not  been  regarded  as  an 
evil  until  very  recent  times.  The  base  of  all 
the  forms  is  the  same.  It  consists,  primarily, 
in  the  thought  that  the  physical  marriage  is 
essentially  impure.  Therefore,  all  married 
people  have  been  supposed  to  live  in  sensuality, 
tolerable  only  by  permission  of  the  law,  or 
sanctified  by  a  church  ceremonial.  Naturally, 
the  young  and  uneducated  have  been  unable 
to  see  the  difference  between  sex- relations  out- 
side the  marriage  and  within  it,  and  have 
easily  fallen  into  the  evil. 

The  cause  of  the  degrading  notion  that 
marriage  is  mere  legalized  sensuality  is  that 
its  spiritual  power  is  not  known.  The  great- 
est value  of  any  action,  whatsoever,  is  in  its 
spiritual,  not  its  physical,  effects.  We  may 
see  this  in  very  simple  things.  Looking  from 
my  window  on  this  bright  winter  morning, 
the  purity  of  the  snow  upon  the  lawn  fills 
me  with  delight,  and,  still  more,  that  here 
and  there  the  sun  makes  little  jewels  of  the 
crystals,  and  a  clear,  brilliant  and  most  ex- 
quisite ruby  color  comes  to  my  eye  as  a  pre- 


ITS   PURITY.  II 


cious  stone  lying  in  the  whiteness;  and  there 
is  another,  equally  brilliant,  but  paler;  and 
there  an  emerald,  and  there  a  topaz.  My  eye 
feasts  on  this  wonderful  display,  and  I  dis- 
cover more  and  more,  until,  for  a  considerable 
space  around,  there  lies  before  me  a  collection 
of  the  rarest  gems.  No  jeweler's  tray  of  pre- 
cious stones  could  be  their  equal  in  clearness, 
brilliancy,  delicacy,  and  warmth  of  color.  The 
mere  sight,  however,  is  the  smallest  part  of 
this  experience.  What  is  of  lasting  value  in 
it  is  the  new  sense  of  beauty  it  has  given  me. 
I  have  never  seen  before,  in  colored  snow 
crystals,  such  numbers,  largeness,  brilliancy, 
exquisiteness.  This  sense  of  beauty  will  be 
mine  forever.  An  added  power,  it  will  go 
forth,  if  there  is  any  love  of  service  in  me, 
in  many  ways,  most  of  them  unconscious, 
for  good  in  my  intercourse  with  fellow- beings. 
As  every  child  opens  a  larger  association  with 
the  world  for  father  and  for  mother,  so  each 
such  mental  and  spiritual  power  as  this  new 
sense  of  beauty  leads  the  way  out  into  greater 
service  to  humanity. 


1 2  MARRIAGE. 


Thus,  every  kind  of  action  has  its  value  in 
its  spiritual  results.  This  is  a  mode  of  our 
spiritual  growth.  Our  acts  are  openers  of 
the  way  by  which  Divine  Life  flows  down 
through  the  character,  even  to  the  outmost 
of  us,  and  goes  forth  into  the  world. 

The  spiritual  powers  created  by  any  act 
are  its  results,  more  than  the  physical;  for 
the  latter  pass  out  of  our  possession,  but  the 
others  belong  to  us  always.  Already,  as  I 
write,  the  sun  has  shifted,  and  my  snow 
jewels  are  gone.  The  sense  of  their  beauty 
stays  with  me  and  is  mine  forever. 

Wanting  this  principle,  the  physical  union 
has  been  held  by  the  world  to  have  no  purity 
inherent  in  itself,  but  allowed  only  as  a  con- 
cession to  human  nature  as  it  is  found  to 
be.  This  has  resulted  in  extreme  evils  within 
the  limits  of  marriage.  Many  a  husband  has 
lived  like  a  brute,  subjecting  the  one  he  loved 
most  dearly  to  the  unspeakable  torture  of  his 
tyranny.  Why  should  he  not?  If  marriage 
is  an  unavoidable  concession  to  human  weak- 
ness, then  must  that  weakness  have  its  way, 


ITS    PURITY.  13 


at  any  cost  whatever  to  the  wife,  in  suffering, 
sickness,  and  even  death. 

In  desperate  revolt  against  the  impurity 
and  misery  of  these  conditions,  pure-minded 
women  have  been  looking  for  a  remedy.  The 
one  naturally  suggesting  itself  first  has  been 
that  physical  union  must  have  been  intended 
only  for  physical  procreation;  and  this  has 
become  so  widely  advocated  in  private  and 
in  public,  that  it  has  now  obtained  something 
of  a  following. 

Those  accepting  this  alternative  have  done 
so  from  not  yet  seeing  the  truth  just  spoken 
of, — that  the  real  effects  of  any  act  are  spiritual. 
By  this  law,  the  physical  union  becomes  of 
spiritual  value,  when  entered  into  in  mutual 
love  and  willingness.  The  feelings  and  the 
thoughts  then  wakened  in  the  souls  of  husband 
and  wife  are  the  real  children  of  the  marriage 
more  than  all  the  child  human  beings  born 
to  them.  Human  beings  are  not  sons  and 
daughters  in  any  lasting  sense.  As  soon  as 
they  are  bora,  they  begin  to  grow  as  separate 
individuals.     In  a  few  years,  their  relation  to 


14  MARRIAGE. 


their  parents  changes  to  that  of  companions; 
of  very  dear  companions,  to  be  sure,  but  with 
nothing  in  it  of  the  child  dependence,  and 
the  mother  and  father  guidance.  They  do 
not  even  go  forth  into  the  world  to  do  the 
will  of  father  or  of  mother,  but  their  own. 
Generally,  their  powers  for  the  world's  welfare 
bear  slight  resemblance  to  those  of  the  parents. 
This  separation,  so  sorrowful  to  the  natural 
affections,  is  not  the  calamity  it  is  supposed 
to  be;  for  the  lasting  relation  of  Life  is  that 
of  marriage,  with  its  spiritual,  not  its  physical, 
children. 

The  idea  that  marriage  in  externals  is 
wholly  for  procreation  is  literally  true;  but  it 
is  for  spiritual  procreation,  preeminently,  and 
this  may  or  may  not  coincide  "with  the  birth 
of  children.  It  cannot  depend  upon  such 
birth;  for  where  the  union  is  permitted  only 
at  the  few  times  when  children  are  expected, 
it  is  practically  banished  from  the  married 
life.  The  theory  of  union  for  mere  physical 
procreation  has  grave  defects  and  deficiencies. 
It  surrounds  with  an  atmosphere  of  filth  the 


ITS    PURITY.  15 


thought  of  the  birth  of  all  the  innocent  babies 
who  have  come  into  life  from  the  usual  habit 
of  living  of  husband  and  wife.  It  supposes 
the  world  to  have  been  immersed  for  ages 
in  a  state  so  vile,  that  if  this  had  been  really 
the  character  of  marriage,  the  race,  if  not  by 
this  time  annihilated,  would  be  a  monster  of 
unmixed  evil. 

Another  defect  is  in  the  necessity  it  involves 
of  a  certain  kind  of  separation  of  the  husband 
and  wife.  Every  real  mother  understands 
how  her  nearness  to  her  child  is  increased, 
marvellously,  by  her  custom  of  being  with 
him  when  he  is  ready  for  sleep.  The  childish 
imperfections  are,  for  the  moment,  laid  aside, 
and  only  the  softer  affections  control  the 
little  spirit.  She  realizes  that  there  is  a  value, 
for  them  both,  not  to  be  gained  at  any  other 
time,  in  those  few  minutes,  before  she  leaves 
him  to  go  to  sleep  peacefully  by  himself. 
Such  affections  as  awaken  then  could  never 
be  called  up  in  daytime  hours.  Similar  states 
of  innocence  and  peace  may  come  to  husband 
and  wife  in   those  moments  when  they  feel 


1 6  MARRIAGE. 


themselves  "alone  with  God  and  the  angels"; 
when  the  day's  cares  and  perplexities  may  be 
driven  away,  and  trust  and  restfulness  in  the 
Divine  be  welcomed  by  them.  Many  of  the 
mutual  annoyances,  the  frictions  which  arise 
from  small  or  the  graver  offences,  may  dis- 
appear without  the  aid  of  formal  explanations, 
in  those  times  of  utter  rest  of  mind  and  body. 
A  mutual  understanding  follows  of  each 
other's  deeper  character,  in  this  quiet  com- 
munion. This  not  only  soothes  for  the  mo- 
ment, but  is  of  lasting  value  as  a  more  gener- 
ous interpreter  of  imperfections  in  the  future. 
Such  peace,  in  its  real  depths,  cannot  be  theirs 
at  any  other  hour,  and  those  who  practice 
the  doctrine  of  sexlessness  lose  largely,  if  not 
altogether,  the  deeper  forms  of  it. 

In  contrast  to  this  sexless  theory  is  the 
ideal  of  the  essential  purity  of  marriage.  The 
object  of  marriage  is  the  growing  into  one  of 
all  the  best  in  the  husband  and  the  wife,  the 
growing  of  each,  constantly,  toward  his  or 
her  highest  possibilities.  The  aim  for  the 
"oneness"  is  that  it  shall  be  a  power  for 


ITS    PURITY.  17 


stimulating  the  highest  possibilities  of  the 
race.  This  married  "one"  has  energies  and 
forces  far  greater  than  those  which  the  same 
man  and  woman,  singly,  could  possess;  for 
it  not  only  is  a  form  of  all  the  best  in  his 
nature  and  in  hers,  but  it  is  these  qualities  in 
united  action. 

It  is  impossible  for  words  to  picture  the 
happiness  of  such  reciprocal  giving  of  the 
individual  selves.  In  a  marriage  like  this, 
each  delights  to  feed  the  angel  in  the  character 
of  the  other,  starving  out  the  self-love  by 
not  administering  to  it;  and  to  the  end 
that  the  "one"  angel  of  their  united  selves 
may  be  an  added  power  for  the  world's  up- 
lifting. 

Such  mutual  love  excludes  no  kind  of  outer 
life  in  its  expression.  Love  seeks,  by  its  very 
nature,  all  possible  modes  of  manifestation. 
It  cannot,  without  crippling  itself,  leave  out 
of  life  its  own  peculiar  language, — caresses. 
The  mother  who  exhausts  her  love  for  her 
child  in  sewing  for  him,  cooking  for  him,  or 
in  providing  others  to  do  these  well,  and  in 


1 8  MARRIAGE. 


carefully  studying  the  best  methods  for  his 
education,  and  never  gives  him  an  endearing 
word  or  a  caress,  is  leaving  out  the  essential 
of  his  education,  thus  stunting  all  his  powers, 
and  putting  his  affections  to  indescribable 
torture.  Caresses  are  the  especial  language 
of  love.  They  say  what  words  cannot.  The 
warm  hand-grasp  of  a  friend,  the  kiss  or  the 
embrace,  when  heartfelt,  are  assurances  of 
continued  affection,  such  as  no  words  can 
convey.  To  the  husband  and  wife  who  value 
marriage  oneness, — and  many  do  who  are 
unconscious  of  it, — caresses  are  infinitely  more 
than  mere  assurances.  Words  can  never  say 
that  which  every  kiss  of  marriage  mutually 
tells  to  them.  It  is  a  pledge  of  continued 
faithfulness  in  their  united  purpose,  a  plea 
for  overlooking  all  shortcomings,  a  wordless 
longing  for  a  closer  union.  It  means  mutual 
understanding,  honor,  love,  desire  for  higher 
living,  and,  above  all,  the  aspiration  to  give 
and  to  receive  the  strength  for  that  higher  life, 
which  they  have  been  created  to  bestow  upon 
each  other.     So  it  speaks  with  its  own  strong 


ITS    PURITY.  19 


language,    and    revivifies    all    their    spiritual 
powers,  and  creates  new  ones. 

Infinitely  stronger  than  the  kiss  in  spiritual 
procreative  power  is  that  nearer  union,  which, 
though  deprived  of  its  true  name  by  the  com- 
mon degradation  of  thought  about  it,  is,  when 
entered  into  in  purity,  a  caress  more  than 
any  other.  When  this  is  given  and  received 
by  each  with  the  purpose  of  mutual  growing 
in  all  the  deepest  and  strongest  possibilities 
of  their  characters,  it  is  the  purest  spiritual 
influence,  and  the  most  powerful,  which  they 
can  bring  mutually  into  their  lives. 


The  theory  of  sexlessness  has,  in  part, 
grown  out  of  a  desire  to  provide  for  unhealthy 
conditions.  There  are  wives  who  are  disabled, 
physically,  for  normal  marriage;  also  those 
for  whom  poverty  makes  the  bringing  of 
children  into  the  world  a  doubtful  wisdom. 
These  conditions  are  abnormalities.  Physical 
disabilities  are  individual  disorders;  poverty 
is   a   race   crime.    They   must   have   special 


MARRIAGE. 


treatment,  case  by  case,  until  they  can  be 
done  away  with.  The  methods  for  meeting 
them  are  not  the  laws  of  normal  living.  Those 
who  have  advocated  the  doctrine  of  sexless- 
ness  have  called  them  so.  A  moment's  thought 
will  show  what  a  mistake  this  is:  Sick  people 
often  have  to  stay  in  bed;  poor  people,  to  go 
hungry;  it  does  not  follow  that  the  way  for 
everybody  to  live  is  to  stay  in  bed  and  starve. 
If  women,  generally,  recognized  the  spiritual 
effect  upon  the  character  of  the  external  union 
of  marriage,  there  would  be  fewer  invalids 
among  wives.  They  would  realize  that  the 
highest  use  they  could  do  for  humanity  would 
be  to  cherish  the  spiritual  power  of  their 
marriage,  and  they  would  avoid  ill-health  as 
they  seldom  do  now.  Very  much  of  sickness 
comes  to  women  from  undue  reaching  after 
what  the  world  can  give  to  them  and  their 
children;  or,  sometimes,  from  false  notions 
of  the  necessity  of  sacrificing  themselves  to 
the  demands  of  relatives  and  friends;  or  to 
"do  good"  to  strangers;  or,  from  over-atten- 
tion to  the  husband's  artificial  wants.     Men 


ITS    PURITY.  21 


often  desire  their  wives  to  keep  up  a  style 
of  living,  and  of  dressing,  for  themselves  and 
children,  which  they,  the  husbands,  affect 
to  despise.  They  often  have  a  selfish  ambition 
that  their  wives  should  excel  others  in  what 
is  called  "good  housekeeping,"  or  they  often 
require  a  table  so  elaborate  that  it  overtaxes 
a  wife  to  see  that  it  is  always  up  to  the  standard. 
If  wives  could  see  the  value  to  their  spiritual 
marriage,  and  of  how  much  stronger  and 
finer  quality  all  their  "doing  good"  of  every 
kind  would  be  in  health  than  in  sickness,  many 
of  them  would  soon  be  able  to  make  their 
husbands  understand  the  wrong  of  exactions 
which  overtax  the  strength  of  the  homemaker. 
This  also  would  be  a  power  for  turning  from 
brutality  in  their  intimate  relations  those 
many  husbands  who  are  more  thoughtlessly 
than  wickedly  selfish,  and  leading  them  toward 
reasonableness  and  self-control.  For  cherish- 
ing the  spiritual  power  of  any  affection  lessens 
the  craving  for  its  abnormal  expression.  The 
effect  of  new-created  soul-energy  is  to  open 
a  greater  variety  of  ways  for  the  expenditure 


MARRIAGE. 


of  all  energy,  and  this  tends  to  decrease  un- 
healthy inclinations  in  any  one  direction. 
The  awakening  of  new  spiritual  powers  brings 
peace  as  well  as  strength,  and  this  also  aids 
in  allaying  the  restlessness  of  abnormal  appe- 
tites. A  soul  at  peace  with  itself  is  lifted 
above  the  slavery  of  the  physical,  and  the 
appetite,  from  being  an  exacting  taskmaster, 
becomes  an  obedient  servant,  as  it  was  made 
to  be.  The  wife,  no  less,  gains  spiritual 
heights  by  spiritual  procreation.  Much  of 
her  striving  to  get  for  herself  and  children 
"what  others  have"  is,  no  doubt,  somewhat 
an  unconscious  effect  of  restlessness  from  lack 
of  spiritual  marriage;  for  this  state  of  peace 
belongs,  by  right,  to  every  wife,  and  its  loss 
must  affect  her  mental  states.  It  cannot  be 
hers  while  she  sees  nothing  in  the  external 
union  but  a  physical  act;  but  when  she  is 
growing  in  the  peace  of  the  spiritual  mar- 
riage, her  newly-created  powers  are  showing 
her  more  and  more  the  little  comparative 
value  of  mere  things,  and  mere  position  in 
the  world.     Taking  the  externals  of  marriage, 


ITS   PURITY.  23 


then,  as  a  means  of  spiritual  growth  leads 
both  the  husband  and  the  wife  to  put  ex- 
ternalities under  their  feet. 

It  is  the  wife  who  must  lead  in  this  uplifting, 
for  the  woman  is  the .  guardian  of  the  mar- 
riage, and  it  is  her  perceptions  which  can 
find  out  its  purity,  and  the  way  to  it.  Neces- 
sarily, while  she  believes  that  it  is  delicate, 
pure,  and  womanly  not  to  care  for  the  physical 
in  marriage, — unknowing  of  its  spiritual  value, 
— she  will  continue  to  allow  ill-health  to  come 
to  her  from  over-fatigue,  which  would  be 
avoided  if  she  realized  the  high  use  in  doing 
so;  and  the  world  will  go  on  abounding  in 
invalid  wives,  and  in  husbands  who  live  down 
in  the  degradation  of  the  mere  physical. 

The  falsity  of  this  notion  of  "womanly 
purity "  is  abundantly  proved  by  facts.  If 
it  were  true,  monasticism  and  Shakerism 
would  long  ago  have  annihilated  the  race. 
Women  would  have  fled  to  them  in  crowds, 
rejoicing  in  their  deliverance  from  a  life  of 
filth.  On  the  contrary,  asceticism  in  mar- 
riage,  as  in  everything,   has  always  been  a 


24  MARRIAGE. 


failure  as  a  mode  of  living  for  people  in  gen- 
eral. Nuns  and  Shakers  are  no  more  than 
a  drop  in  the  great  ocean  of  humanity. 

The  truth  is  that  there  is  no  time  in  a 
woman's  adult  life  when,  if  she  is  in  love 
with  her  husband,  she  seems  to  herself  so 
enwrapped  in  an  atmosphere  of  pure  inno- 
cence as  in  her  early  days  of  marriage.  It 
extends,  also,  beyond  herself  and  enfolds  all 
the  world.  The  lovelinesses  of  nature  and  of 
human  nature  seem  more  real  and  deep  than 
she  ever  recognized  before;  their  uglinesses, 
more  like  mere  blemishes,  capable  and  almost 
sure  to  turn  some  time  toward  the  beautiful 
and  heavenly.  Never  before  have  her  own 
untoward  circumstances  seemed  so  certain  to 
work  themselves  out  for  good.  This  inno- 
cence, coming  in  the  days  when  her  purity 
is  the  most  sensitive  to  outward  influences, 
is  a  refutation  of  the  theory  that  marriage 
has  anything  in  it  essentially  impure. 

The  innocence  of  these  first  days  has  a 
large  and  peculiar  value  of  its  own.  It  has 
been  supposed  to  be  a  mere  mood  of  senti- 


ITS    PURITY.  25 


mentality.  It  is  exactly  the  reverse.  It  is 
like  the  innocence  of  babyhood,  which,  though 
not  the  purity  of  wisdom,  pictures  it.  These 
peculiarly  innocent  states  of  the  baby  are 
images  of  the  innocence  which  will  be  reached 
by  growth  in  general,  in  spiritual  character. 
Those  of  the  wife  and  husband  in  the  first 
days  of  married  life  picture  the  abounding 
joy  and  peace  they  will  come  into  through 
growth  in  the  true  marriage.  When  the  in- 
evitable storms,  sometimes  terrible  with  dark- 
ness, black  with  despair,  threaten  to  destroy 
the  happiness  of  those  who  marry  young 
and  so  must  work  out  the  first  stages  of  their 
spiritual  growth  together,  this  exquisite  purity 
of  the  early  days  may  be  a  beacon  light  through 
the  otherwise  impenetrable  clouds.  It  shines 
steadily  for  them,  and  instead  of  turning  away 
from  it  as  sentimentality,  or  an  illusion,  or 
a  dream,  it  is  to  be  looked  to  as  lighting  the 
way  to  the  true  marriage  of  their  spirits,  which 
cannot  be  reached  except  by  struggling  through 
darkness  and  battling  with  storms. 

The  two  theories  stand  in  dramatic  con- 


26  MARRIAGE. 

trast.  Look  at  them!  for  they  hold  within 
themselves  deep  tragedies  or  endless  hap- 
piness. 

The  one  seeks  the  practical  annihilation  of 
physical  sex. 

The  other  seeks  that  the  power  universally 
acknowledged  to  be,  physically  and  mentally, 
the  strongest  which  human  beings  possess, 
should  consecrate  itself  to  the  upward-growing 
of  the  race. 


ITS  SERVICE. 

THE  sermon,  essay  and  the  moral  story 
all  tell  us  that  our  lives  should  be  a 
service  to  fellow-beings,  and  we  intend 
to  make  them  so.  We  are  kind, — when  not 
too  cross;  helpful, — when  not  too  busy;  unsel- 
fish,— when  not  too  much  occupied  with  our 
own  affairs;  and  in  moments  of  contrition,  we 
scold  ourselves  for  ever  being  too  cross,  busy, 
or  self-occupied. 

With  this  sincere  purpose  at  heart,  it  puzzles 
and  discourages  us  to  find  how  often  our 
service  fails  to  serve.  We  sacrifice  a  longed- 
for  pleasure  to  insist  upon  its  being  enjoyed 
by  some  one  else,  only  to  discover  later  that 
it  is  what  he  especially  disliked,  but  had 
accepted  in  order  to  spare  our  feelings;  we 
overwork  to  relieve  another,  and  become 
broken  in  health,  when  our  nervousness, 
irritability,  and  necessary  demands  upon  the 
strength  of  friends  cause  more  suffering  than 
all  we  have  relieved;  we  seek  to  lighten  some 


28  MARRIAGE. 

unhappiness  by  sharing  generously  our  small 
resources,  and  find  the  recipients  plunged  into 
deeper  gloom,  because,  from  their  viewpoint, 
we  have  been  giving  stingily  from  out  our 
great  abundance;  we  spend  time  which  we 
crave  for  self-improvement,  in  order  to  minister 
to  one  who  has  no  claim  upon  us,  and  ever 
after  we  are  looked  upon  as  a  neglectful 
servant,  because  we  do  not  make  our  minis- 
trations life-long;  we  set  aside  a  larger  life 
which  we  might  have  had,  in  order  to  bring 
easier  circumstances  to  a  dear  one,  with  the 
result  that  we  have  cleared  the  way,  only, 
for  her  to  indulge  in  selfishness  ruinous  to 
health,  mind,  morals  and  estate;  we  eagerly 
engage  in  philanthropic  work,  in  "education  of 
the  masses,"  and  ponder  later,  as  to  whether 
we  have  done  more  for  this  particular  "mass" 
than  to  sharpen  their  intellectual  tools  for 
making  all  crimes  respectable.  Examining 
our  public  and  our  private  benefactions,  it 
appears  to  us  that  nine-tenths  of  our  "service" 
has  been  a  giving  to  some  what  they  did  not 
want,  and  to  the  rest  what  they  ought  not 


ITS    SERVICE.  29 


to  have.  Then  we  sit  down  in  blank  despair 
and  wonder  what  is  the  matter  with  the 
Golden  Rule. 

The  matter  is  with  our  reading  of  it.     It 
does  not  say- 
Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do  to 
you,   persist  in   their  accepting    it  from    you, 
whether  they  want  it  or  not; 

Nor— 

Whatever  generosity  ye  do  to  others,  they 
will  always  understand  from  your  view  of  it, 
not  from  theirs; 

Nor— 

Whatever  foolishness  ye  would  that  men 
should  do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to  them. 

The  Golden  Rule,  like  other  spiritual  truths, 
supposedly  means  discretion,  some  knowledge 
of  human  nature,  and  common  sense, — that 
is,  Wisdom. 

In  contrast  to  the  thought  that  these  ex- 
traneous ministrations  are  the  highest  "doing 
good,"  we  may  recall  another  kind  of  charac- 
ter. We  all  have  known  a  few  of  those  rare 
men  and  women  whose  mere  presence  is  a 


30  MARRIAGE. 


personal  service.  It  is  not  that  they  say  and 
do  more  interesting  things  than  anybody  else, 
but  that  they  are  so  interesting  in  everything 
they  say  and  do.  Their  mere  "Good  morn- 
ing"  is  a  gift,  for  it  awakens  inspiration  in 
us,  a  sense  of  having  powers  ourselves,  which 
they  seem  tacitly  to  recognize,  and  which  we 
have  never  known  we  were  possessed  of. 
These  natures  carry  with  them  an  influence 
which  one  feels  as  coming  from  their  having 
found  life  abundantly  worth  living.  For  any 
one  to  be  admitted  into  their  atmosphere  is 
a  rare  service  which  they  give,  unconsciously, 
to  all  who  approach  them.  They  do  not  fail 
in  ordinary  offices  of  kindness,  and  whatever 
of  philanthropy  they  think  is  wise  in  the 
present  world,  where  men  are  striving  to  make 
"giving"  serve  instead  of  justice;  but,  more 
than  any  conscious  "doing  for  others"  is 
what  they  do  because  of  what  they  are.  For 
doing  follows  upon  being  as  the  fruit  the 
flower.  The  bringing  of  power  into  another's 
life  is  the  only  possible  real  service.  The 
giving  of  a  piece  of  bread  to  a  hungry  boy 


ITS    SERVICE.  31 


is  called  "doing  good";  but  if  that  be  all, 
it  is  worthless,  for  it  means  no  more  than 
that  he  will  die  of  starvation  to-morrow, 
instead  of  to-day.  The  real  gift  would  be 
the  putting  of  power  within  his  reach  by  which 
he  may  find  how  to  get  bread  for  himself, 
and  never  hunger  again.  Further  still,  that 
which  makes  external  power  of  any  value 
is  inspiration.  One  might  supply  the  hungry 
boy  with  work,  but  if  he  were  not  roused  to 
feel  that  he  could  do  it,  he  would  fail.  This 
inspiring  of  others  is  the  true  service.  It  is 
the  bestowal  upon  them  of  the  Divine  Life 
constantly  flowing  through  one's  character 
and  forth  to  others.  When  this  Life  is  kept 
as  free  as  may  be  from  one's  imperfections, 
it  is  an  inspiration;  when  vitiated  by  one's 
faults,  it  hinders,  or  arouses  to  evil.  Those 
rare  souls  whose  mere  presence  is  a  gift,  while 
they  mold  by  their  own  individuality  the  Life 
which  they  receive,  aim  to  keep  it  free  from 
their  own  blemishes.  This  constant  elimina- 
tion of  their  evils  is  their  spiritual  growing. 
Marriage   is   the   condition   in   which    this 


32  MARRIAGE. 


growth  may  be  at  its  full  height  of  conscious 
happiness.  Each  class  of  duties  of  the  hus- 
band and  the  wife  are  grounds  for  its  activity. 
The  wife  may  make  her  homemaking  a  large 
and  beautiful  dwelling-place  for  her  husband 
by  loving  its  order,  neatness,  cheerfulness 
and  beauty  because  it  is  an  atmosphere  in 
which  his  every  power  may  thrive.  She  may 
feel,  sensibly,  his  generous  heart  grow  larger, 
his  noble  thought  finer,  within  the  genial 
sunshine  of  her  loving  personal  care  of  him. 
To  make  room  for  such  deepening  of  his 
character,  she  must  constantly  put  out  of  life 
her  peculiarities,  her  petty  selfishnesses  and 
her  larger  evils.  Thus  the  doing  of  every 
duty,  from  the  shunning  of  inner  iniquities 
to  the  outmost  act  of  making  his  home  restful, 
may  be  the  means  of  bringing  the  Divine 
Life  to  her  husband's  soul.  In  his  turn,  he 
may  carry  on  his  business,  the  foundation 
of  their  material  existence,  with  honesty  and 
honorableness,  to  the  end  that  she  may  dwell 
in  the  peace  which  integrity  brings  to  a  house- 
hold.    His  peculiarities  and  his  larger  evils 


ITS    SERVICE.  33 


may  be  avoided  so  that  his  manhood  shall 
be  a  purer  home  in  which  her  ever-growing 
womanhood  may  live  and  find  communion 
with  God.  His  personal  services  may  be  ren- 
dered to  her  with  a  love  that  shall  continually 
open  her  heart  wider  to  all  spiritual  influences. 
The  entering  in  of  the  Divine  Life  to  each 
through  the  other  will  be  the  deepest  joy  that 
human  love  can  know. 

In  such  a  marriage,  then,  each  seeks  the 
highest  growth  attainable,  that  each  may 
abundantly  bestow  life  upon  the  other.  The 
husband  enfolds  the  wife  in  the  warm  atmos- 
phere of  his  ever-strengthening  manhood, 
and  she  responds  with  sweet  appreciation 
of  its  character,  nourishing  it  with  her  woman's 
wise  perception  of  its  possibilities,  and  thereby 
growing  in  her  own  angelic  powers.  The 
spiritual  children  born  of  such  a  marriage 
are  strong,  deep-hearted  forms  of  love  and 
wisdom.  By  these,  the  home  becomes  a 
center  from  which  radiates  neighborly  love 
in  peculiar  strength  and  beauty.  The  hus- 
band's business  is  an  administering  to  the 
3 


34  MARRIAGE. 


needs  and  happiness  and  comfort  of  the  com- 
munity; the  affairs  of  municipal,  national 
and  international  interest  receive  whatever  of 
wise  influence  it  is  in  the  power  of  such  a 
home  to  extend  to  them;  while  the  social 
life  which  gathers  around  is  warm  with  gen- 
erous interpretation  of  the  neighbor,  and  deep 
with  aims  for  loving  service  in  everything  it 
enters  into. 

There  are  few  such  marriages  as  yet.  There 
cannot  be  until  both  men  and  women  under- 
stand, each  the  other,  as  they  do  not  now. 
Many  husbands  and  wives  who  are  probably 
well-mated  in  interior  character  are  getting 
on  together  with  only  passable  comfort.  They 
have  not  found  out  that  they  were  made  for 
harmony,  for  they  do  not  take  into  account 
the  possibility  of  adjusting  their  differences 
of  temperament.  One  is  mild,  the  other 
hasty;  one  is  prompt,  the  other  slow.  The 
remedy  largely  offered  in  the  past  has  been 
pious  platitudes  about  "patience,"  "long- 
suffering,"  "never  raising  one's  voice  above" 
(the  exact  pitch  is  just  now  forgotten),  "never 


ITS   SERVICE.  35 


answering  back,"  etc.,  ad  infinitum.  A  little 
common  sense  would  make  a  better  working 
rule.  When  a  woman,  habitually  procrastin- 
ating, keeps  her  husband  waiting  some  hours 
overtime  for  his  noonday  dinner, — she  having 
dallied  through  her  shopping  trip  in  a  neigh- 
boring town,  and  being  her  own  house- worker, 
— and  he  storms  about  it,  and  she  remarks 
with  habitual  slowness  and  a  patient  sigh, 
"Father  is  so  impatient,"  the  onlooker  feels 
that  a  more  radical  cure  for  " father"  would 
be  the  regeneration  of  "mother's"  habits  into 
harmony  with  the  necessities  of  the  masculine 
stomach.  This  the  dear  woman  never  thinks 
of;  and  she  goes  through  life,  perhaps,  under 
the  r61e  of  "saint,"  because  of  her  "patience" 
with  father's  temper.  This  patience  is  doubly 
exasperating  to  his  irascibility  because  every- 
body implies,  and  his  own  conscience  tells 
him,  that  he  is  a  brute  to  be  angry  with  a 
sweet  wife  who  is  never  angry  with  him.  A 
closer  thought  will  show  that  she  is  as  great 
a  sinner  as  he,  indulging,  under  cover  of  a 
naturally  mild  temper,  in  a  selfishness,  un- 


36  MARRIAGE. 


conscious,  but  gigantic,  of  a  natural  love  of 
procrastination. 

The  difficulty  widens  when  the  differences 
are  emphasized  by  sex.  A  man  has  never 
the  same  outlook  as  a  woman.  He  sees  dif- 
ferent things,  although  he  is  in  the  same  world 
and  everything  is  before  the  sight  of  both. 
The  boy  will  stop  in  the  street  and  watch  for 
hours  the  digging  of  a  trench,  the  movement 
of  a  car,  the  hoisting  of  weights.  The  girl 
sees  none  of  these,  but  gazes  enraptured  at 
the  textures  in  shop  windows,  the  exquisite 
combinations  of  colors,  the  grace  of  the  de- 
signs. They  may  not,  either  of  them,  have 
the  slightest  personal  interest  in  what  they 
are  looking  at.  The  girl  is  merely  absorbed 
in  her  sensations  awakened  by  delicious  color- 
ing and  forms,  the  boy,  by  strength  and  power. 
This  difference  goes  through  all  the  woman- 
hood and  manhood  of  the  two.  The  man 
refers  everything  to  strength  and  power,  and 
large,  general  principles;  the  woman,  to 
delicacy,  grace,  and  more  especial  detail. 
Each   recognizes  the  usefulness  in  the  par- 


ITS    SERVICE.  37 


ticular  quality  delighted  in.  The  man  sees 
use  in  strength  and  knows  that  the  world 
would  "go  to  pieces"  if  it  were  wholly  gov- 
erned by  the  woman's  kind  of  life;  the  woman 
perceives  the  use  in  all  the  finer  elements, 
and  that  the  world  would  work  its  own  de- 
struction by  its  very  strength  if  this  strength 
were  left  unmodified.  Each,  too,  admires 
the  other's  quality, — at  a  distance.  Trouble 
begins  when  they  attempt  to  join  them  into 
one.  They  admire,  but  they  do  not  under- 
stand; and  when  the  quality  of  each  comes 
into  the  life  of  the  other,  it  annoys,  irritates, 
hurts,  displeases,  angers.  Their  struggles  are 
a  power  for  bringing  them  the  discovery  that 
there  exists  a  natural  harmony  between  strength 
and  grace,  which,  if  they  will,  they  may 
cherish  and  make  grow  into  an  exquisite  music 
in  their  inner  lives.  Too  often  they  care 
more  for  the  lesser  things,  and  so  go  on  un- 
comfortably in  a  state  of  mutual  semi-criticism, 
with  little  adjustment  and  no  understanding. 

The  way  of  cherishing  harmony  lies  in  the 
confidence  of  each  in  the  quality  of  the  other. 


38  MARRIAGE. 


Women  are  apt  to  sigh,  complainingly,  "How 
queer  men  are!"  and  men  to  mutter,  "Just 
like  a  woman!"  Neither  takes  the  trouble 
to  understand  that  there  is  some  sense  and 
reason,  under  the  other's  view.  For  instance, 
a  man  seldom  says,  "lam  sorry."  He  repents 
as  often  and  as  truly  as  a  woman,  of  anger 
and  injustice;  but  the  deeper  his  repentance, 
the  more  insignificant  do  words  seem  to  him. 
He  resolves  that  he  will  show  his  sorrow  by 
a  convincing  act;  and  perhaps  at  some  per- 
sonal sacrifice  to  himself,  he  purchases  a  gift 
which  he  knows  his  wife  has  often  coveted. 
This  will  show  her  his  real  sorrow  for  his 
fault.  He  takes  it  home,  eager  to  be  forgiven, 
and  to  see  the  happy  smile  again.  His  face 
is  bright  with  anticipation,  and  with  the  ten- 
derness awakened  by  contrition.  To  his 
surprise,  pain,  and  bewilderment,  she  looks 
coldly  upon  the  gift,  scarcely  thanks  him  for 
it,  and  puts  it  out  of  sight  as  soon  as  she  can 
find  excuse  for  doing  so.  It  is  then  that, 
in  his  chagrin  and  despair,  he  mutters,  "Just 
like  a  woman,  you  never  can  please  her.     I 


ITS    SERVICE.  39 


thought  she  wanted  that  more  than  anything, 
else."  On  her  part,  she  is  saying,  heart- 
brokenly  to  herself,  "How  queer  men  are! 
He  has  actually  forgotten  how  unjust  he  was 
to  me  this  morning.  He  looks  as  happy  as 
if  he  had  never  said  words  to  me  that  I  shall 
never  forget.  Or,  perhaps  he  thinks  he  can 
make  up  by  buying  baubles  for  me.  A  man 
will  do  anything  rather  than  to  acknowledge 
himself  wrong.  It  seems  as  if  it  would  be 
so  easy  just  to  say  'I'm  sorry.'  It  isn't  hard 
for  me.  I'm  glad  to  let  him  know  that  I  see 
when  I  am  wrong;  but  I  really  believe  that 
William  would  spend  his  last  cent  rather 
than  to  own  up.  Well,  he  shall  know  that 
my  forgiveness  can't  be  bought.  He  will 
have  to  ask  for  it  if  he  wants  it."  So  the 
trouble  grows,  through  weary  days,  sometimes 
through  the  earth-life.  The  remedy  would 
have  been  easy  at  first.  If  each  had  had 
confidence  in  the  other's  different  kind  of 
sense,  they  would  have  said  to  themselves 
that  the  other  must  mean  something  that 
seemed  reasonable  to  him  or  her.     Each  would 


40  MARRIAGE. 


try  to  find  out  how  the  other  is  thinking. 
Then  she,  on  her  side,  would  soon  learn  of 
the  man's  feeling  that  talking  is  cheap  repara- 
tion for  a  wrong,  as  if  he  thought  he  might 
indulge  in  any  injustice  if  he  would  be  willing, 
afterward,  to  say  a  few  smooth  words;  and 
he,  on  his,  would  discover  that  a  sincere  word 
of  sorrow  for  a  wrong  done  her  would  be 
more  to  her  than  all  the  jewels  of  all  the 
crowned  heads  of  Europe. 

The  struggles  come  out  in  a  variety  of 
ways,  in  the  necessary,  or  accepted  differences 
of  occupation  of  the  man  and  the  woman. 
The  wife  begins  to  grieve,  as  the  newness 
of  married  life  wears  off,  that  her  husband 
gradually  omits  some  little  attentions  which 
he  gave  at  first.  "  He  does  not  love  me  any 
more,  as  he  did,"  she  says  to  herself,  "he  is 
growing  tired  of  me,  as  they  say  all  men  do 
of  their  wives,  even  the  very  best  of  them"; 
and  he,  meantime,  "Why  is  she  so  disturbed 
because  I  cannot  do  everything  for  her  that 
I  did  at  first?  Doesn't  she  know  how  hard 
I  work,  and  as  much  for  her  as  for  myself? 


ITS   SERVICE. 


and  that  I  am  working  to  give  her  a  pleasanter 
home, — yes,"  and  his  eyes  soften  with  a  loving 
light,  "  and  one  more  fitted  to  her  sweet  grace  ?  " 
When  the  children  come,  the  problem  of  how 
to  care  rightly  for  them  perplexes  and  absorbs 
her,  and  he  is  often  lonely  in  his  home  hours. 
He  cannot  understand  why  she  should  be 
always  with  them,  and  she  cannot  find  any 
way  to  help  it  without  neglecting  them. 

So  the  differences  go  on  throughout  the 
myriad  affairs  of  the  daily  round.  The  young 
hearts  suffer  torture  from  their  very  love.  If 
they  are  wise,  they  soon  begin  to  help  each 
other  in  adjusting  matters,  and  thus  to  grow 
in  oneness.  The  attaining  of  such  under- 
standing cannot  be  a  cold  process  of  the 
intellect.  It  is  love  which  makes  one  wise. 
There  must  be  the  love  which  yearns  to  feel, 
beneath  the  seemingly  cold  act,  a  warmth 
that  makes  the  action  Love's  own  messenger; 
or  to  know  why  a  sincere  effort  to  express 
sorrow  for  wrong  should  be  unwelcome;  or 
to  understand  the  necessity  for  changed  habits 
of  the  one  or  the  other.     The  love,  also,  in 


42  MARRIAGE. 


order  to  feel  such  yearning,  will  have  needed 
all  modes  of  making  itself  felt.  This  is  why 
the  "doctrine  of  sexlessness"  so  endangers 
the  growth  of  marriage  oneness.  It  keeps 
the  husband  and  wife  apart  in  almost  all  the 
wordless  forms  of  mutual  understanding. 
There  is  small  chance  for  the  spirits'  nearness 
when  every  near  approach  to  each  other  must 
be  guarded  by  unnatural  restraints,  which, 
under  the  name  of  self-control,  seek  to  avoid 
the  expression  of  love.  The  knowledge  of 
each  other's  nature  must  be  superficial,  under 
these  restraints,  compared  with  what  could 
be  with  the  same  persons,  in  freer  conditions. 
Those  husbands  and  wives  who  come  into 
the  beautiful  deeper  understanding  often  are 
of  the  rare  few  whose  mere  presence  is  a  gift 
to  all  who  enter  it.  To  each  other,  their 
lives  are  a  most  blessed  inspiration.  His 
harshness  has  been  softened  by  her  sensitive- 
ness, her  morbidness  has  grown  into  a  healthy 
delicateness  through  the  receiving  of  his 
strength.  His  larger  interpretation  of  life, 
which  might   easily   have   run  into   disorder 


ITS    SERVICE.  43 


for  want  of  limit,  is  fashioned  into  beauteous 
shape  by  her  woman's  formative  power;  her 
woman's  tendency  to  limit  everything  to  a 
personal  meaning  has  found  larger  applica- 
tions with  the  aid  of  his  manliness.  Their 
lives  bless  the  world  through  the  highest 
service  of  human  being  to  human  being, — 
that  of  marriage. 


THE  MARRIAGE  OF  THE 
UNMARRIED. 

THERE  is  one  principle  which  obtains 
throughout  the  universe,  and  every 
action,  even  the  smallest,  is  the  effect 
of  it,  as  truly  as  the  entire  creation.  It  is 
the  law  of  union  and  fruition.  The  sight  of 
the  snow  crystals  was  the  fruit  of  the  light 
uniting  with  my  eye.  So  every  thought,  and 
act,  and  feeling,  as  well  as  all  material  things, 
are  brought  forth  by  two  somethings  acting 
as  a  one.  Below  the  human  plane  the  unions 
are  temporary,  and  of  either  good  or  bad 
results.  With  the  human,  when  they  are  true, 
they  are  marriage,  which  is  always  good  in 
its  effects.  The  various  human  sexual  rela- 
tions not  permanent,  or  not  good,  are  not 
marriage,  although  some  of  them  are  called  so. 
The  inner  personal  marriage  between  hus- 
band and  wife  is  that  which  gives  value  to 
the  external.     Lacking  this  inner  oneness,  the 


THE    MARRIAGE    OF   THE    UNMARRIED.  45 

outer  tie  is  mere  consecrated  externality.  In 
many  cases,  however,  it  only  seems  lacking 
for  a  time,  and  later  the  real  union  shows 
itself  as  such. 

This  "oneness"  is  not  possible  without 
another  union  in  each  of  the  two  souls.  The 
individual  is,  in  essence,  forms  of  affection 
and  thought,  which,  when  the  life  is  spiritual, 
act  as  one.  If  the  ruling  affection  is  bad, 
delighting  in  thought  false  to  all  true  living, 
it  acts  itself  out  into  unholy  deeds.  There  is 
a  kind  of  union  between  the  two,  but  no  real 
oneness.  Evil  and  falsity  are  at  war,  always, 
even  between  themselves,  and  there  is  no 
peace  to  the  soul  which  is  governed  by  them. 
When  the  ruling  affection  is  good,  it  is  Love, 
which  continually  seeks  a  marriage  with 
Wisdom,  in  order  to  bring  forth  forms  of 
service  to  mankind. 

The  personal  real  marriage  is  impossible 
between  a  husband  and  wife  who  are  not, 
in  some  degree,  each  growing  in  this  indi- 
vidual oneness  of  soul;  and  the  only  way  to 
spiritual  life  for  the  single  man  and  the  single 


46  MARRIAGE. 


woman  is  by  the  same  union  of  the  love  and 
wisdom  of  their  souls,  individually. 

The  fruit  of  the  individual  marriage  is,  like 
the  spiritual  children  of  the  husband  and 
wife,  service.  We  are  only  beginning  to  know 
what  this  word  means.  In  past  times  it  has 
been  applied  to  all  manner  of  irregular  doings, 
supposed  to  be  beneficial  to  somebody  in 
proportion  to  the  amount  which  they  destroyed 
for  the  doer,  of  health,  strength,  time,  income, 
enjoyment,  or  real  usefulness.  Its  usual  name 
is  "sacrifice."  It  has  for  ages  been  supposed 
to  be  the  road  direct  to  heaven,  and  this  is 
still  insisted  on  in  many  sermons,  essays,  and 
novels.  We  are,  in  spite  of  this,  beginning 
to  know  that  service  is  the  pouring  out  upon 
others  of  blessings  born  to  our  souls  through 
the  marriage  of  love  and  wisdom  in  them, 
and  that  this  marriage  takes  place,  in  its 
fullness,  only  in  the  normal  round  of  life. 
Where  "sacrifice"  is  service,  the  necessities 
for  it  are  mere  "emergency  cases."  We 
render  real  service  by  acting  out  our  love 
in  forms  of  wisdom  in  the  daily  living.    Where 


THE    MARRIAGE   OF    THE   UNMARRIED.  47 

this  is  a  constant  sacrifice,  and  cannot  be 
made  a  happy  service,  something  is  wrong 
either  with  ourselves,  which  is  quite  likely, 
or  with  the  situation,  which  ought  to  be  changed 
if  possible,  and  given  the  most  conscientious 
thought  as  to  how  it  may  be  made  possible. 

Service  may  be  rendered  in  only  a  moment's 
association.  You  meet  a  mere  acquaintance, 
exchange  a  few  commonplaces,  and  go  your 
way  refreshed  by  a  something  beautiful  which 
has  come  from  his  atmosphere  into  your  life. 
It  stays  with  you.  As  long  as  you  live,  the 
memory  of  it  inspires  you.  More  deeply  still, 
the  chief  service  which  one  does  is  the  pouring 
out  of  one's  life  through  the  wise  direction 
of  the  daily  routine  and  associations. 

Service,  to  be  the  child  of  the  inner  mar- 
riage, necessitates  the  having  of  some  external 
work  for  which  one  is  responsible.  Mere 
desultory  duties  cannot  satisfy  a  strong  affec- 
tion. One  must  love  steadily,  to  love  deeply; 
also,  wisdom  cannot  unite  with  love  which 
wanders  from  one  aim  to  another.  The  inner 
marriage  needs  a  body  of  permanency,  exactly 


48  MARRIAGE. 


as  the  personal  marriage  needs  the  same 
external  form.  The  lack  of  it  is  noticeable 
in  the  "unmarried"  atmosphere  of  single  men 
and  women  who  have  no  especial  interest  in 
anything  of  value.  They  may  be  even  working 
daily,  for  the  getting  of  an  income,  but  they 
put  into  their  tasks  no  more  than  an  external 
wisdom.  This  is  not  marriage.  Different, 
entirely,  is  the  atmosphere  of  single  men  who 
carry  on  their  business  with  wise  devotion, 
in  honesty,  honorableness,  and  conscious  or 
unconscious  love  of  service.  Vastly  different, 
too,  is  that  of  single  women  who,  perhaps 
in  their  own  work,  perhaps  only  as  a  sub- 
ordinate in  another's,  are  earnestly  uniting 
their  devotion  (love)  to  good  judgment  (wis- 
dom). These  single  men  and  women  have 
a  roundness  and  a  fullness  of  mentality  in- 
dicating marriage,  which,  indeed,  they  are 
growing  into,  and  are  giving  of  its  service  to 
the  world.  The  others  bear  an  atmosphere  in 
which  something  is  wanting,  and  that  something 
is  essential.  It  may  be  useful  to  recall  here, 
that  there  are  husbands  and  wives  who  have 


THE   MARRIAGE   OF   THE   UNMARRIED.  49 

the  same  "unmarried"  appearance,  and  it  is 
reasonable  to  judge  that  it  is  caused  by  their 
not  having  grown,  to  any  great  extent,  in  the 
individual  union. 

The  inner  marriage  cannot  exist,  to  any 
satisfactory  degree,  unless  the  service  is  real. 
A  woman  may  plan,  systematically,  to  spend 
her  life  making  sofa  pillows,  embroidering 
her  gowns,  and  putting  ornaments  on  the 
dress  of  her  sister's  children,  interspersing 
these  "domestic  duties"  with  pincushions  and 
dolls  for  fairs,  and  all  this  may  be  of  little 
service.  If  the  sofa  pillows  and  embroidery 
are  merely  "something  to  do"  they  are  not 
useful,  and  no  wisdom  can  join  itself  to  such 
a  love.  As  for  fairs,  they  are  simply  an  ex- 
travagant means  for  people  to  cheat  themselves 
into  paying  more  money  toward  a  cause  than 
their  judgment  would  otherwise  allow.  There 
is  almost  no  service  in  such  work,  and  women 
who  devote  their  lives  to  it  are  missing  much 
of  the  marriage  which  belongs  to  them. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  man  or  a  woman  may 
have  a  position  in  which  he  or  she  seems  to 
4 


50  MARRIAGE. 

do  no  real  work,  but  only  to  cultivate  the 
mind,  and  yet  may  be  filling  an  important 
place  in  the  world's  uses.  Suppose  a  father, 
left  by  his  wife's  death  with  a  motherless  girl. 
Being  yet  in  her  teens,  she  is  not  old  enough 
to  assume  the  household  cares,  and  there  is 
a  tried  and  faithful  upper  servant  who  does 
this  with  entire  satisfaction.  The  father  feels 
the  need  of  the  protection  and  companionship 
for  his  daughter,  of  a  woman  who  is  her  social 
equal.  He  has  a  relative  who  gladly  accepts 
his  invitation  to  make  her  home  with  them 
for  this  purpose.  One  might  say,  judging 
casually,  that  this  older  woman  led  an  idle 
life.  Yet,  being  a  true  woman,  she  is  em- 
ployed in  real  service.  She  interests  herself, 
as  she  must  always  have  done,  in  all  good 
thought,  and  all  good  doings  of  the  world. 
She  considers  that  it  is  her  especial  work,  now, 
to  provide  an  atmosphere  of  rich  mentality 
for  the  young  girl.  She  has  no  authority  over 
the  younger  one.  Nevertheless,  by  her  own 
character,  broad,  deep,  and  true,  she  opens 
to  the  other's  vision  the  possibilities  of  a  fine 


THE    MARRIAGE    OF    THE    UNMARRIED.  5 1 

womanhood.  If  the  girl  is  one  capable  of 
vision,  so  that  she  can  be  inspired,  the  other's 
service  to  her  is  all  the  more  real  that  it  is 
unconscious  in  detail,  and  without  authority. 
It  is  a  fine  service,  because  the  one  who  gives 
it  is  fine  herself.  It  is  so  well  worth  working 
for,  the  real  character-growth.  In  any  situa- 
tion, it  is  an  inspiration  to  the  character  of 
others.  It  is  so  free  from  self-conceit,  so 
absolutely  without  self-consciousness,  because 
it  is  continually  seeking  the  marriage  within 
itself  of  the  highest  love  and  the  deepest 
wisdom  it  can  learn  of. 

Cases  like  the  above,  where  a  woman  has 
a  real  work  to  do  without  an  apparent  outer 
form,  are  rare.  Usually,  service  takes  a 
definite  shape,  and  one  in  which  success 
measures  its  efficiency.  This  is  the  normal 
life.  Success  is  a  legitimate  element  of  the 
individual  marriage.  Whether  the  success  is 
really  the  child  of  that  marriage  depends, 
as  does  failure,  and  everything  else,  upon  what 
we  do  with  it.  Some  people  have  a  genius 
for  succeeding,  as  others  have  for  art,  music, 


52  MARRIAGE. 


or  science.  By  these,  the  interior  marriage 
cannot  be  gained  except  by  loving  their  success 
for  the  service  it  renders,  instead  of  for  its  selfish 
gain.  To  those  who  have  not  an  external 
genius  for  it,  the  failures  may  point  out  the 
way  to  get  it,  and  this  can  be  for  them  only 
by  means  of  the  union  of  the  love  and  wisdom 
of  the  soul.  The  spirituality  of  failure  has 
been  often  insisted  upon,  and  with  truth, 
except  that,  usually,  only  the  half  is  told. 
Failure  is  spiritual  as  far  as  it  points  out  how 
to  unite  love  with  wisdom,  and  so  finally  to 
bring  success.  For  the  ultimate  of  spirituality 
is  common  sense,  and  "all  power  is  in  ulti- 
mates."  It  is  not  sensible  to  suppose  that 
the  object  of  spiritual  service  is  not  to  do 
the  service.  One's  worldly  gains  may  not 
be  very  great,  but  that  some  degree  of  ex- 
ternal success  will  follow  any  work  loved  so 
deeply  that  it  seeks,  until  it  finds,  forms  of 
wisdom  through  which  to  act,  is  simply  to 
say  that  God  works  through  His  own  laws. 
Failure  is  usually  caused  by  one  of  two  con- 
ditions (the  failure  which  is  brought  upon  a 


THE    MARRIAGE    OF   THE   UNMARRIED.  53 

person  in  business  by  the  errors  of  other 
people  is  not  here  meant): — Either  we  have 
chosen  the  wrong  work,  or  we  have  not  used 
the  wisdom  necessary  to  make  the  right  one 
efficient.  In  one  case  or  the  other,  we  are 
not  marrying  our  love  to  our  wisdom.  Instead 
of  being  discouraged  by  the  failure,  we  might 
rejoice  that  it  is  trying  to  point  out  to  us  the 
way  to  the  true  service,  i.  e.,  success. 

Health,  that  much  despised  and  much 
abused  element  of  our  lives,  is  an  essential  to 
the  fullness  of  the  inner  marriage.  In  wed- 
lock, the  wife  may  attain  to  heights  of  spiritual 
wifehood  and  motherhood,  when  in  health, 
which  the  same  woman  could  never  dream 
of  in  invalidism.  Similarly,  the  single  man 
or  the  single  woman,  needs  to  preserve  health 
as  earnestly,  for  the  sake  of  the  interior  mar- 
riage. The  service  of  both  soul  and  body 
rests  upon  control  of  one's  own  powers,  and 
this  can  be  gained  fully  only  in  their  normal 
condition.  We  have  inherited  from  an  an- 
cestry beridden  with  asceticism,  the  notion 
that  invalidism  is  a  synonym  for  godliness. 


54 


MARRIAGE. 


Consequently,  not  one  in  a  thousand  of  us 
is  well  and  strong.  We  have  dropped  the 
idea  of  the  actual  godliness,  but  we  have  not 
yet  taken  into  recognition  the  unspirituality 
of  illness.  We  are  not  responsible  for  our 
invalidism  in  its  beginning,  any  more  than 
we  are  for  a  naturally  irritable  temper;  but 
neither  is  the  want  of  health  more  spiritual 
than  the  temper.  Evils  can  be  utilized  for 
teaching  us  humility  and  patience.  Neverthe- 
less, a  spiritually-minded  person  does  not  go 
on  in  courses  which  he  knows  will  increase 
his  violent  temper  on  the  theory  that  it  is  a 
means  of  regeneration.  The  same  principle 
ought  to  be  carried  out  in  invalidism,  as  in 
any  other  evil.  We  cannot  help,  always, 
having  come  into  ill-health.  This  often  is 
upon  us  before  we  have  learned  how  we 
might  avoid  it.  When  this  is  the  case,  we 
can  work  as  faithfully  toward  its  alleviation 
or  its  cure,  as  we  do  to  control  and  lessen 
irritability,  obstinacy,  unkind  feeling,  or  any 
other  fault.  As  a  means  of  discipline,  the 
keeping  of  one's  health  far  outstrips  the  power 


THE   MARRIAGE   OF   THE   UNMARRIED.  55 

of  sickness.  More  actual  self-denial  is  needed 
to  guard  the  health,  than  for  overworking, 
over-eating,  under- exercising,  under-sleeping, 
over-recreating,  and  overdoing  "doing  good 
to  others"  until  we  fall  sick.  Ill-health  often 
comes  from  the  selfishness  of  want  of  self- 
control,  or  from  timidity,  which  dares  not 
resist  unjust  demands  from  others  upon  one's 
time  and  strength,  or  income.  Self-indulgence 
and  timidity  have  nothing  spiritual  in  them. 

Ill-health  is  unspiritual,  because  it  prevents 
the  completeness  of  the  inner  marriage.  Ex- 
cept in  "emergency  cases,"  which  are  rare 
unless  we  manufacture  them  artificially,  no 
love  that  we  can  pour  out  upon  another  while 
weakening  our  own  powers  in  order  to  do 
it,  can  compare,  in  stimulating  life  to  the 
receiver,  with  what  we  do  by  love  united  to 
wisdom  in  normal  physical  energy  and  vigor. 

Much. of  the  loneliness  and  forlornness  of 
single  life  would  disappear  with  the  adoption 
of  the  conscious  aim  to  grow  in  the  inner 
marriage.  Single  persons  who  desire  the  per- 
sonal marriage,  ascribe  an  undue  amount  of 


56  MARRIAGE. 


loneliness  to  the  lack  of  the  domestic  com- 
panionship they  long  for.  It  is  the  inner 
marriage  which  drives  away  loneliness,  the 
loving  to  do  real  service  in  the  world.  Without 
this,  the  married  woman  is  as  much  a  prey 
as  the  unmarried  to  mental  miseries.  If  she 
does  not  feel  alone,  she  is  wretched  because 
she  does  not,  for  she  is  overburdened  with 
the  demands  of  the  human  beings  whose 
happiness  and  comfort  she  must  care  for. 
Nothing  but  love  of  service  can  make  the 
numberless  duties  of  the  wife  and  mother 
seem  anything  but  weights  depriving  her  of 
mental  growth,  their  conflicting  elements 
anything  but  vexations.  Exactly  as  the  bur- 
dens of  the  married  are  turned  into  loving 
responsibilities,  the  perplexities  into  interesting 
problems,  by  the  inner  marriage  in  the  indi- 
vidual soul  of  the  husband  and  of  the  wife, 
so  is  the  loneliness  of  the  unmarried  turned 
into  mental  freedom  for  becoming  wisely 
loving  in  human  service,  by  the  same  marriage 
in  the  soul.  To  single  men  and  women  who 
long  for  their  own  domestic  life  and  interests, 


THE    MARRIAGE    OF   THE   UNMARRIED.  57 

the  inner  marriage  makes  greater  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  coming  of  the  outer.  The 
thought  of  service  in  one's  mind  drives  away 
the  shyness  in  association  with  the  other  sex, 
which  causes  many  a  sweet  woman  and  noble 
man  to  appear  cold  and  indifferent.  The 
true  spiritual  state  would  guard  a  woman 
from  sentimentality  (the  selfishness  of  vanity) 
on  the  one  hand,  and  from  unwomanly  bold- 
ness on  the  other.  Frank,  wholesome  inter- 
course with  friends  of  the  other  sex,  which  is 
the  soundest  foundation  for  marriage  love, 
would  become  a  habit.  When  the  personal 
marriage  is  finally  given  to  such  a  man  and 
such  a  woman,  they  have  not  lost  anything 
by  the  lateness  in  its  coming.  For,  just  as 
husband  and  wife,  married  young,  have  found 
their  closer  union  by  growth  into  the  individual 
marriage  through  the  experiences  of  life 
together,  so  will  the  others,  during  the  time 
of  waiting,  have  reached  this  same  marriage, 
which  has  been  fitting  their  souls  for  becoming 
one. 


MARRIAGE  LAWS. 

MARRIAGE  laws  would  be  extremely- 
simple    if    marriages    were    always 
happy.     It  is  its  unhappy  relations 
which  make  the  need  of  elaborate  regulations 
about  it. 

The  variety  of  its  laws,  both  in  Church  and 
State,  causes  great  uneasiness  to  the  conscience 
of  the  public,  or  else  to  its  sense  of  fitness. 
Divorce  and  remarriage  are  the  mooted  issues. 
The  State,  in  general,  allows  both ;  the  Church, 
— the  Protestant, — inclines  to  frown  them 
down,  although  only  one  denomination  pro- 
hibits them.  The  consensus  of  State  opinion 
is  that  every  person  has  a  right  to  marriage, 
and  that  if  the  present  one  is  given  up  he  may 
be  allowed  another;  the  Church  implies  that 
God  hath  joined  together  whomsoever  the 
priest  hath  pronounced  husband  and  wife, 
and  that  the  breaking  of  this  union  is  a  viola- 
tion of  the  marriage  sanctity.  The  many 
States  of  our  Union,  and  the  many  sects  of 


MARRIAGE   LAWS.  59 


the  church,  differ  greatly  in  their  modes  of 
expressing  their  general  principles. 

The  majority  of  persons  have  an  opinion  as 
to  a  wise  and  uniform  code.  A  few  have  none. 
It  is  clear  to  them  that  no  change  for  the  better 
can  be  made  with  only  the  present  kind  of 
knowledge  on  the  subject.  Marriage  princi- 
ples are  not  studied  by  the  general  mind  of 
even  the  cultivated  world.  The  subject  itself, 
as  serious  philosophy,  is  a  forbidden  one  in 
conversation  and  in  literary  essay.  Marriage 
holds  in  its  power  the  spiritual,  moral,  mental, 
and  physical  welfare,  and  even  the  actual 
continuance  of  the  race,  but  its  nature  and 
needs  are  not  given  as  much  thought  as  the 
life  of  a  dog,  or  the  habits  of  a  pet  rabbit. 
With  a  few  honorable  exceptions,  the  con- 
troversies about  it  have  concerned  principally 
its  outer  form.  They  have  not  touched  its 
inner  nature,  the  terms  of  outer  life  best 
fitted  to  the  character-growth  of  the  individuals 
united  in  it,  the  danger  to  that  growth,  of 
careless  laxity  regarding  divorce;  or,  on  the 
other  hand,  of  holding  bound  together  a  man 


6o  MARRIAGE. 


and  a  woman  entirely  unsuited  to  each  other; 
or,  of  keeping  from  remarriage  some  pre-emi- 
nently fitted  for  strengthening  by  it  the  charac- 
ter-growth of  the  race ;  and  thus  through  indi- 
vidual inferiority,  the  debasing  of  race  integrity. 
The  world  looks  upon  marriage,  now,  as  it 
has  for  ages,  as  inherently  a  self-indulgence, 
sanctified  only  by  a  religious  rite.  Such 
sanctification,  which  is  supposed  to  be  "the 
institution  of  marriage,"  when  it  has  once 
covered  over  the  grossness  of  the  self-indul- 
gence, must  be  guarded,  because  it  is  the  only 
thing  about  the  union  which  is  supposed  to 
be  sacred. 

Therefore,  marriage  cannot  be  talked  of 
seriously.  Fiction,  to  be  sure,  is  allowed  and 
encouraged  to  entertain  and  horrify  with 
pictures  of  marriage  violations,  its  miseries 
and  the  crimes  committed  in  its  name.  These 
miseries  and  crimes,  also,  make  the  kernel 
of  one  half  the  jokes  in  life  and  literature; 
but  serious  converse  upon  normal  marriage 
is  not  good  form  in  good  society.  How  can 
it   be,    when   the   common,    even   cultivated, 


MARRIAGE   LAWS.  6 1 


thought  makes  it  a  mere  glossing  over  of  the 
grossest  self-indulgence,  physically,  and  of 
an  equally  gross  self-devoted  self-happiness, 
mentally?  An  attempt  at  a  higher  stand  is 
sometimes  made  in  the  excuse  for  the  reticence, 
— that  marriage  is  too  " sacred"  to  be  talked 
about.  This  would  have  a  semblance  of 
reason  if  it  were  too  sacred  to  be  joked  about. 
It  even  then  would  be  not  more  than  a  sem- 
blance. For  marriage,  as  the  strongest  human 
power  for  the  finest  character-building,  is  not 
a  kind  of  sacredness  which  cannot  be  talked 
about.  Personal  experiences,  which  are  what 
the  excuse  refers  to,  are  not  principles  of 
marriage  any  more  than  personal  habits  are 
principles  of  neatness.  The  establishing,  in 
the  general  mind,  of  marriage  as  the  great 
principle  of  life,  is  the  only  foundation  for 
laws  about  it  which  shall  be  universal  and 
lasting. 

It  is  not  forgotten  that,  in  the  past,  there 
have  been  sundry  volumes  of  "Advice  to 
Wives,"  and  an  occasional  one  of  "Advice 
to  Husbands,"  and  that  ministers  speak  of 


62  MARRIAGE. 


marriage  as  sacred;  but  the  "Advices,"  when 
summed  up,  are  only  commonplaces  about 
being  amiable,  and  the  ministers'  remarks, 
often  equally  commonplace,  are  taken  by 
everybody  as  what  ought  to  be  said  in  church. 
They  are  all  looked  upon  as  pious  sayings 
expected  in  such  connections.  Marriage  con- 
tinues to  be  held  as  a  not  proper  topic  for 
serious  consideration  in  good  society. 

The  life  of  marriage  depends  upon  two 
conditions, — permanency,  and  inner  union. 
Real  marriage  is  a  constant  growth  in  spiritual 
oneness,  and  temporariness  cannot  promote 
it.  To  the  husband  and  wife  who  love  their 
marriage  with  each  other,  the  finding  out 
how  they  may  make  a  mutual  adjustment 
of  their  natures  is  their  greatest  joy.  No 
blemish  in  the  other  brings  discouragement 
to  either;  no  self-gratification  can  compare 
with  the  delight  of  yielding  individual  prefer- 
ences in  order  to  increase  the  growing  oneness. 
Sacrifice  ceases  to  be  sacrifice,  for  all  is  ser- 
vice,— the  greatest  human  joy.  The  unselfish 
service  and  joy  begin  in  feebleness,  but  steadily 


MARRIAGE   LAWS.  63 


gain  strength.  All  this  necessitates  perma- 
nency, the  body  of  marriage. 

Its  soul  is  inner  union.  Fortunately  for 
humanity,  although  it  complicates  the  prob- 
lem, marriage  has  a  soul.  It  cannot  be  formed 
with  any  two,  one  man  and  one  woman, 
however  earnest  and  honest  each  may  be. 
The  two  must  be  so  fitted  for  each  other 
that  each  may  be  able  to  see  through  sur- 
face imperfections  and  even  grave  evils  of  the 
other,  to  the  spark  from  the  Divine  Life 
at  the  center  of  the  soul.  Otherwise,  there  is 
always  the  danger  that  their  characters  will 
clash  and  destroy  each  other.  The  difficulty 
in  making  adequate  laws  lies  in  this  need  of 
marriage  for  its  own  soul.  When  this  is 
wanting,  something  ought  to  be  done,  and  it 
is  for  this  reason  that  study  is  necessary. 

The  possibility  of  inner  union  is  not  always 
lacking  where  it  seems  to  be.  There  are 
temporary  unhappinesses,  serious  for  a  time, 
but  gradually  disappearing  with  experience  and 
growth.  Without  permanence,  these  husbands 
and  wives  would  miss  the  final  joy  of  their 


64  MARRIAGE. 


real  marriage.  With  characters  well-mated, 
where  there  is  the  feeblest  desire  for  other 
than  a  wholly  selfish  life,  the  chance  always 
remains  for  happiness. 

Outside  of  these  are  found  many  unions 
which  are  only  legal  arrangements.  Some  of 
them  are  between  men  and  women  too  ig- 
norant or  too  selfish,  or  both,  to  enter  into 
anything  deeper.  Such  joinings  of  the  mere 
outer  life  are  as  common  in  cultivated  society 
as  in  the  slums.  Another  class,  needing  the 
wisest  laws,  are  the  mismated  husband  and 
wife  who  are  both  earnest  characters,  capable 
of  a  true  marriage;  but  who  have  made  an 
honest  mistake  in  choice,  and  their  daily 
living  together  is  a  deadening  of  their  highest 
growth. 

Every  true  marriage  is  an  incalculable 
power  constantly  on  the  increase,  for  the 
upward  growth  of  the  world.  The  spiritual 
effects  of  any  life  are  like  seeds,  each  producing 
other  seeds,  and  each  of  these  progenitors 
of  countless  millions  more.  The  life  of  a  true 
marriage  is  such  seed,  of  the  supremest  quality. 


MARRIAGE   LAWS.  65 


It  is  made  up  of  all  the  best  of  the  man  and 
all  the  best  of  the  woman,  with  an  ever- 
increasing  elimination  of  their  evils.  It  thus 
works,  constantly,  for  the  creating  of  a  stronger 
and  finer  human  race.  The  world  cannot 
afford  to  lose  anything  of  such  character.  The 
story  is  told  of  Lincoln,  to  whom  an  officer 
reported  that  a  young  Quaker,  who  had  been 
conscripted,  would  not  fight  and  did  not  fear 
either  punishment  or  death.  Should  they 
shoot  him  for  a  traitor?  "No,"  answered  the 
great  President,  "  don't  you  see  the  country 
can't  afford  to  lose  a  man  like  that  for  nothing  ? 
Find  some  reason  for  sending  him  home." 
There  may  be  a  doubt  of  the  fact  of  a  Quaker 
being  forced  into  the  army  in  this  country, 
but  the  story  has  a  deep  truth  in  it.  The  race 
cannot  afford  to  destroy  its  strongest  and 
finest  fiber,  nor  can  it  any  more  afford  to 
prevent  its  growth.  Yet  it  does  this  every 
time  it  hinders  a  real  marriage.  The  yielding, 
meekly,  of  the  victims,  to  such  hindrances 
is  much  advocated  in  real  life,  and  promi- 
nently in  fiction,  with  the  claim  that  it  is  the 
5 


66  MARRIAGE. 


highest  nobility  of  character.  The  keeping 
of  a  promise  of  marriage  when  one  or  the 
other  finds  the  choice  a  mistake  has  been 
considered  earthly  angelhood.  Sacrificing  one's 
marriage  to  the  countless  selfishnesses  of  rela- 
tives is  another  deification  of  what  is,  in 
reality,  a  sin  against  humanity,  except  in  the 
intention  of  the  victim  who  does  it.  Also, 
those  marriage  laws  which  prevent  true  mar- 
riages are  a  form  of  destruction  of  the  finest 
strength  of  the  race.  Marriage  cannot  be 
kept  a  sacred  institution  unless  as  a  builder 
of  character  it  is  not  only  preserved,  but 
planted,  watered,  and  cherished  in  its  growth. 

How  shall  we  guard  marriage  as  the  grandest 
human  character?  How  shall  we  get  for  the 
world  the  maximum  of  such  character,  at 
present,  and  work  toward  its  constant  increase  ? 
How  shall  we  bring  to  bear  upon  every  mar- 
riageable person  the  strongest  influence  for 
leading  him  to  look  toward  his  possible  mar- 
riage as  an  entity  having  both  soul  and  body  ? 
What  is  the  knowledge  which  will  enable  the 
husband    and    wife,    newly   wedded,    to   live 


MARRIAGE    LAWS.  67 


toward  making  their  marriage  a  constantly 
increasing  soul  within  its  body,  by  seeking 
between  themselves  a  constantly  growing 
oneness?  What  is  the  knowledge  which  will 
lead  the  temporarily  unhappy  in  their  union 
to  find  the  harmony  possible  to  them  ?  What 
kind  of  knowledge  will  guide  to  a  decision 
as  to  the  wisest  law  for  the  actually  mismated, 
whose  efforts  to  become  the  married  "one" 
only  fashion  them  into  individualities  less  and 
less  suited  for  welding  into  such  oneness? 
Those  are  meant  here  who  Began  with  the 
honest  belief  that  they  were  mentally  fitted 
to  one  another,  and  who  are  sincerely  living 
as  truly  as  they  know  how.  They  are  like 
a  heart  and  hand  which,  the  more  perfect 
they  grow,  the  heart  as  heart,  and  the  hand 
as  hand,  are  less  and  less  able  to  act  together, 
as  the  heart  can  with  the  lungs,  and  the  hand 
with  its  mate.  Or,  they  are  like  a  horse  and 
an  elephant,  yoked  together.  These  are  both 
noble  animals,  but  unfitted  for  union.  The 
more  perfect  the  horse  as  a  horse,  and  the 
elephant  as  an  elephant,  the  more  readily  will 


68  MARRIAGE. 


they  destroy  each  other's  highest  powers,  if 
bound  into  the  same  harness.  Finally,  How 
shall  the  world  so  emphasize  the  supreme 
pricelessness  for  itself  of  the  marriage-char- 
acter that  the  tendency  will  be  to  turn  those 
toward  it  who  care  nothing  for  its  outer  body, 
and  know  nothing  of  its  inner  soul  ? 

If  it  is  true,  as  is  here  assumed,  that  mar- 
riage-character is  the  integrity  of  the  race, 
definite  philosophic  study,  at  stated  times,  is 
not,  by  any  means,  all  the  kind  of  thought 
it  needs.  As  much,  it  is  imperative  that  in 
any  touch  upon  marriage  in  common  con- 
versation, we  should  invariably  speak  front 
its  principles.  Talking  of  principles  is  not 
useful  in  ordinary  chit-chat;  but  it  is  our 
obligation  to  an  earnest  life  to  talk  always 
from  them.  This  would  throw  out  all  joking 
about  the  unhappiness  of  marriage.  Also  all 
the  light  conversation  would  be  shunned 
about  weddings,  as  if  clothes,  furniture,  and 
the  husband's  income,  actual  and  possible, 
were  the  aim  of  the  marriage;  but  it  would 
make  these  very  things  of  interest  as  signs 


MARRIAGE    LAWS.  69 


of  outer  forms  which  shall  contain  the  marriage 
purity  and  its  service. 

There  are  ideas,  always  brought  up  in  the 
discussion  of  marriage  laws,  which  are  com- 
monly treated  with  an  abundance  of  thought 
that  does  not  reach  far  below  the  surface. 
The  rigorist  theory  of  divorce  is  one.  This 
has,  for  centuries,  been  practiced  by  the 
Roman  Church,  the  oldest  and  largest  Christian 
denomination  in  the  world.  Its  record,  that, 
with  the  exception  of  Ireland,  the  Catholic 
countries  are  distinguished  for  an  immorality 
forming  the  life  of  a  majority  of  their  peoples, 
high  and  low,  leaves  no  need  for  further 
research  into  the  theory. 

A  Protestant  modification  of  this  law  is, — 
Divorce,  but  no  remarriage.  Sensible  persons 
favor  this  decree,  yet  it  is  among  those  man- 
made  laws  which  have  no  common  sense  for 
their  foundation.  This  alone,  taking  no  other 
proof,  shows  the  dearth  of  thought  upon 
marriage  as  character-building,  and  is  an 
evidence  of  the  attempt  to  uphold  the  institu- 
tion artificially.     One  moment's  consideration 


70  MARRIAGE. 


will  show  its  utter  unreason.  The  divorced 
person  is  bound  to  a  dead  contract,  as  one 
Siamese  twin,  living,  to  his  dead  brother; 
bound  to  a  bond  which  does  not  bind,  to  an 
obligation  without  duties  or  responsibilities, 
except  not  to  do  something  which  the  former 
husband  or  wife  has  no  longer  any  right  to 
care  for,  whether  it  is  done  or  not.  What 
kind  of  a  ghastly  thing  is  this  for  sensible 
humanity  to  torture  itself  with, — to  stunt  and 
cripple  and  deaden  the  life  remaining  to  some 
of  its  members,  and  consequently  to  its  own 
as  a  whole?  The  measure  is  supposed  to  be 
a  preventive  of  divorce.  This  is  trying  to 
prevent  an  evil  by  after  penalty,  rather  than 
by  previous  instruction,  a  method  which  has 
always  failed  and  is  always  failing.  The 
Protestant  Church,  as  a  whole,  has  never 
lifted  its  voice  in  teaching  that  marriage  is 
the  highest  form  of  character-building.  This 
knowledge  would  be  the  greatest  power  in 
preventing  legal  unions  which  need  divorce. 
The  Church  stands  for  motherhood.  She  has 
no  moral  right  to  refuse  to  help  her  children 


MARRIAGE    LAWS.  7 1 


to  make  up  for  mistakes  which  she  has  not 
had  the  moral  force  to  show  them  how  to  keep 
out  of.  She  may  claim  that  right,  but  not  as 
a  mother;  it  has  much  resemblance  to  the 
edict  of  a  tyrant.  There  are  many  kinds  of 
mothers,  and  some  of  them  are  tyrants.  The 
Church  is  supposed  to  be  worthy  of  the  name. 
The  true  mother  teaches  her  child,  helps  him 
in  his  errors,  shows  him  how  to  make  his 
failures  steps  to  higher  living.  She  does  not 
cut  him  off  from  the  chances  of  that  higher 
living.  Especially,  she  does  not  give  him 
penalties  for  mistakes  made  in  ignorance  of 
what  she  has  not  known  how  to  teach  him. 
She  goes  to  work,  late  as  it  is,  with  the  aim 
of  remedying  the  evil  by  instruction,  if  she 
now  knows;  by  seeking  it,  if  she  does  not 
yet  know.  She  sees  that  she  enfeebles  the 
family  life  by  holding  him  back  from  his 
highest  growth,  not  less  after  his  mistake  than 
before.  The  Church,  likewise,  weakens  the  in- 
stitution of  marriage,  and  her  own  spiritual  char- 
acter, when  she  holds  back  any  of  her  children 
from  any  possibilities  for  their  highest  growing. 


72  MARRIAGE. 


Often  it  is  said  that  the  prohibition  of 
divorce,  or  of  remarriage  after,  is  not  injurious 
to  the  individual,  because  all  suffering  is 
regenerative.  All  needful  suffering  is  regenera- 
tive, like  the  pain  which  comes  to  the  injured 
limb,  reviving  into  health.  Unneedful  suf- 
fering is  the  torture  which  leads  to  death. 

Also,  they  say,  that  by  this  theory  are  sacri- 
ficed only  the  few  for  the  good  of  the  many. 
This,  too,  is  untenable.  A  hand  cannot  be 
maimed,  a  leg  crippled,  or  a  heart  diseased 
without  a  weakening  of  the  whole  body. 
Neither  can  the  character-growth  of  any 
person  be  obstructed  without  enfeebling  the 
fiber  of  the  great  humanity. 

Again,  "What  God  hath  joined  together, 
let  not  man  put  asunder."  This  most  sacred 
truth  has  been  much  profaned,  by  practically 
reversing  it, — What  man  has  joined  together, 
let  not  even  God  put  asunder.  God  has  had 
nothing  to  do  with  some  marriage  ceremonies 
except  to  permit  them,  as  He  does  other  evils. 
They  have  been  conceived  in  iniquity,  shapen 
in  sin,  and  presided  over  by  the  Prince  of 


MARRIAGE   LAWS.  73 


Darkness,  to  whom  the  priest  has  lent  his 
services,  simply  because  he  must,  having  had 
no  power  to  refuse,  or  interfere.  It  is  not 
necessary  that  either  he  or  we  should  declare 
that  every  marriage  ceremony  performed  by 
him  is  the  work  of  God.  No  one  can  doubt 
that  such  unions  often  take  place,  and  that 
they  sometimes  result,  through  the  very  suf- 
fering they  cause,  in  turning  one  or  the  other 
of  the  pair  in  horror  from  their  sin,  and  toward 
a  longing  for  a  real  marriage,  as  in  the  case 
of  Gwendolen,  in  Daniel  Deronda ;  the  other 
goes  on  living  down  in  the  depths,  thus  crip- 
pling the  life  of  the  one.  This  shows  the  need 
of  research  into  the  nature  of  spiritual  adultery. 
For  adultery  is  the  only  ground  of  divorce 
admitted  by  the  Bible.  Every  avowed  Chris- 
tian acknowledges  a  glad  homage  to  the 
Bible  as  the  absolute  truth.  Only  a  few, 
perhaps  none,  in  these  days  of  spiritual 
awakening,  hold  that  all  its  truth  dwells  in 
its  literal  statements.  Every  person  who 
believes  the  "graven  images"  we  must  not 
worship   to   be,    besides   material   things,    or 


74  MARRIAGE. 


the  inordinate  longing  for  them,  even  the 
worship  of  one's  intellect,  or  one's  culture, 
or  other  mentalities;  that  the  "killing"  we 
are  not  to  do  is,  besides  the  taking  of  physical 
life,  or  the  desire  to  take  it,  any  hatred  of 
the  neighbor;  that  the  "stealing"  forbidden 
is  not  alone  the  taking  of  his  goods,  or  even 
the  desire  to  take  them,  but  also  the  depriving 
the  neighbor  of  happiness,  or  anything  else 
pertaining  to  his  welfare, — every  person  be- 
lieving these  interpretations  is  not  standing 
on  ground  where  he  can  insist  that  "adultery" 
means  the  outer  sin  alone,  or  even  the  mental 
longing  to  commit  it.  Spiritual  adultery  is 
the  adulterating  of  good  and  the  falsifying 
of  truth.  It  may  be  committed  in  one's  own 
character,  alone;  it  follows  that  it  may  be 
effected  by  a  husband  and  wife  upon  each 
other's  characters.  A  husband  who  holds 
his  wife  down  to  base  living,  preventing  her 
growth  in  the  possibilities  within  her,  by 
choking  up  the  way  with  his  own  foulness, 
must  be  adulterating  the  good  of  her  character; 
and  when  he  turns  the  truth  he  knows  into 


MARRIAGE    LAWS. 


75 


falsity,  and  keeps  her,  by  her  necessity  of 
living  in  his  life,  from  finding  out  the  true 
interpretations,  he  must  be  adulterating  her 
truth,  and,  consequently,  the  good  which 
belongs  to  it.  Further  than  this,  adultery  is 
the  union  of  two  who  do  not  belong  to  each 
other.  It  then  must  be  the  mental  condition 
of  two  persons  mismated  in  marriage,  even 
when  they  are  both  honest  and  earnest.  The 
husband  may  be,  for  instance,  social  in  nature, 
and  the  wife  of  a  more  serious  genius.  He 
feels  that  love  to  the  neighbor  means  hospi- 
tality, a  generous  giving  of  one's  best,  a  living 
in  one's  good  things  for  the  sake  of  such  sharing. 
Consequently,  he  loves  much  social  life  of 
the  home;  and  that  there  may  be  room  and 
service  for  such  hospitality,  he  loves  as  large 
a  house  and  as  many  servants  as  he  can  afford. 
With  all  this,  being  human,  he  is  imperfect, 
and  his  faults  naturally  take  the  form  of  pride 
in  his  beautiful  living  and  his  hospitality. 
He  is  aware  of  this  evil,  but  he  believes  that 
it  is  the  pride  which  he  should  strive  to  lay 
aside,   not   the   hospitality.     His   wife   is   so 


76  MARRIAGE. 


unlike  him,  that  she  cannot  even  understand 
him.  She  loves  serious  thought.  Social  life 
is  mostly  worldliness  to  her.  She  believes 
that  one  must  shun  its  outer  forms  in  order 
to  shun  the  worldliness  itself.  She  engages, 
perhaps,  in  class  work,  studying  much  herself 
and  helping  others  to  learn  to  think.  She 
finds  her  social  pleasures  in  these  connections. 
It  seems  to  her  a  sinful  waste  of  life  to  spend 
money  and  time  on  supplying  people  with 
things  to  eat,  beds  to  sleep  in,  and  mere  chit- 
chat for  entertainment.  The  pride  of  her 
husband  in  doing  these  things  seems  to  her 
his  realest  self,  his  love  of  the  neighbor  in 
them  not  much  more  than  a  self-made  excuse 
for  the  pride.  To  overcome  the  evil,  she 
would  have  him  give  up  the  hospitality.  On 
the  other  side  she  is  just  enough  to  know  that 
she  has  no  right  to  insist  upon  his  doing  this, 
simply  because  it  is  her  way,  and  therefore 
she  wastes  much  of  her  life,  as  she  believes, 
in  joining  in,  and  carrying  on  her  part  of, 
his  hospitality.  There  is  a  continual  war- 
fare in  her  soul  over  the  question  whether 


MARRIAGE    LAWS.  77 


she  is  not  helping  him  in  error,  instead  of 
simply  yielding  him  wifely  consideration.  If 
there  are  children,  her  sense  of  wronging 
them  by  uniting  with  him  in  his  course  is 
terrible.  The  battle  in  his  soul  is  no  less 
fierce.  In  justice  to  her  he  omits  many  forms 
of  neighborly  kindliness,  that  she  may  not 
be  disturbed  in  the  life  which  she  considers 
of  value.  To  him,  though,  it  seems  a  self- 
righteousness  to  be  always  trying  to  teach 
somebody  something.  He  is  right,  for  she, 
not  being  perfect,  has  this  kind  of  pride, — 
it  belongs  to  her  kind  of  nature.  She  is  strug- 
gling against  it,  but  his  very  evident  opinion 
of  it,  although  he  tries  to  conceal  it,  magnifies 
his  worldliness  so  largely  in  her  eyes,  that 
it  hides  from  her  the  real  greatness  of  her  own 
self-righteousness.  She,  in  her  turn,  tries  to 
conceal  her  opinion  from  his  sight,  and  they 
succeed  in  keeping  up  an  outward  harmony. 
Each  is,  within,  neither  himself  (herself)  nor 
the  other.  Each  is  trying  in  vain  to  make 
a  union  between  his  or  her  good  and  her 
or  his  truth,  and  they  do  not  belong  to  each 


78  MARRIAGE. 


other.  The  service  to  others  which  she  loves 
expresses  itself  through  thought.  She  sees 
that  the  evils  of  the  world,  large  and  small, 
come  from  thoughtlessness.  If  people  would 
only  think  what  they  are  doing,  they  would 
not  injure  each  other  by  private  selfishness 
and  public  wrongs.  Lack  of  thought  is,  as 
she  sees  it,  the  great  crime  of  the  world.  To 
him,  the  world's  sins  come  from  lack  of  love, 
from  selfishness.  People  preach,  and  study 
and  think  and  then  bring  to  the  family  asso- 
ciations moodiness,  unpleasant  words,  unjust 
interpretations  of  each  other.  Their  thinking 
powers  often  work  to  save  money  for  comforts 
for  themselves  which  they  never  share  with 
anybody;  to  carry  on  their  business  as  a  device 
for  getting  much  and  giving  little,  or  they 
often  bury  themselves  in  a  selfish  love  of 
study.  It  is  love  people  need,  he  says,  and 
they  will  never  think  themselves  into  it;  they 
must  feel  themselves  into  it,  and  then  thoughts 
enough  will  come.  Thus,  with  the  best 
efforts  possible  the  husband  and  wife  adul- 
terate   each    other's    good    and    falsify    their 


MARRIAGE    LAWS.  79 


truths.  They  strive  to  be  just,  to  leave  each 
other  in  freedom,  and  the  yielding  makes  a 
less  loving  man  of  him,  but  with  a  growing 
tendency  to  undervalue  thought,  and  a  less 
sincerely  thoughtful  woman  of  her,  although 
with  a  growing  tendency  to  undervalue  love 
as  a  direct  motive.  Love  and  thought  are 
both  vitiated  in  both  characters.  They  are 
not  a  help  to  each  other.  In  order  that  a 
wife's  influence  should  tend  to  lead  a  husband 
out  of  his  faults,  she  must  understand  the 
good  underneath,  she  cannot  help  him  by 
merely  combatting  his  evils.  Likewise,  he 
with  her. 

The  disquietness  of  mind  grows  into  a  dis- 
taste for  each  other's  ways.  The  pose  of  her 
head,  the  motion  of  her  hand,  suggests  to 
him  disagreeably  her  self- righteousness.  The 
air  with  which  he  passes  her  a  glass  of  water 
is  to  her  a  sign  that  he  cherishes  worldliness 
in  his  smallest  act.  Thus,  they  destroy  each 
other's  best  by  preventing  its  growth.  The 
children,  the  most  sensitive  of  mortals  to  the 
spiritual  states  of  others,  soon  learn,  in  spite 


So  MARRIAGE. 


of  the  conscientious  efforts  of  father  and 
mother  to  hide  it,  that  harmony  is  merely 
on  the  outside.  Each  takes  sides,  uncon- 
sciously, with  whichever  parent  suits  him 
best,  finding  excuse  for  his  own  evils  in  the 
one  or  the  other;  and  learns,  besides,  his 
little  lesson  of  how  life  may  be  made  a  mere 
appearance  of  what  it  is  not.  The  family 
life  in  spirit,  is  a  warfare  of  mutually  destroy- 
ing elements  of  character. 

This  is  an  instance  of  one  of  the  very  mildest 
kinds  of  hells  of  spiritual  adultery.  Yet 
men  and  women,  thoughtful  on  every  other 
subject,  advocate  with  eagerness  the  perpetua- 
tion of  these  hells,  holding  such  nominal 
husbands  and  wives  in  lives  of  sinning,  and 
ruining  the  innocence,  for  all  the  earth-life,  of 
little  children.  They  do  this,  not  because  of  a 
desire  to  injure  humankind,  but  in  the  hope 
of  stamping  out  the  evil  of  divorces  for  in- 
sufficient causes.  That  is,  they  are  trying  to 
destroy  a  natural  monster  by  creating  an 
artificial  one  to  kill  him  off.  This  is  a  non- 
uplifting  and  never  succeeding  process.    The 


MARRIAGE    LAWS.  8 1 


problem  to  be  worked  out  is, — How  shall  the 
Law  provide  so  that  the  danger  on  both 
sides  shall  be  brought  down,  absolutely,  to  its 
minimum  ?  If  it  encourages  separation  during 
temporary  misunderstandings  of  any  two  who 
might  grow  into  one  by  longer  patience  and 
a  deeper  effort,  the  character-growth  of  all 
humanity  is  vitiated  by  loss  of  this  true  mar- 
riage; and  none  the  less,  if  the  two  grow  more 
unlike  with  their  increase  of  perfection  of  in- 
dividual development,  an  equal  vitiation  of 
race- character  takes  place.  Hasty  dicta  will 
not  destroy  the  double-headed  evil.  On  one 
side  the  arbitrary  holding  of  two  characters 
together  who  never  can  grow  into  one,  violates 
the  imperative  demand  of  marriage  for  its  own 
soul,  the  inner  union ;  on  the  other,  the  chang- 
ing of  one's  husband  or  one's  wife  with  every 
changing  mood,  is  equally  destructive  of  the 
permanence  imperative  to  the  growing  inner 
oneness.  The  Law  must  be  impelled  by  love 
of  the  highest  race-life  possible  to  be  attained, 
and  must  be  framed  by  wise  perception  of  what 
will  lead  the  race  to  such  life.  That  is, — The 
6 


82  MARRIAGE. 


Law,  to  be  effective,  must  mean  "marriage," 
through  and  through.  It  must  be,  itself,  a 
marriage  of  race  love  and  wisdom.  It  must 
have  for  its  purpose  that  other  marriage, — 
the  ever-increasing-oneness  of  Permanence  and 
Inner  union. 


*Does  the  above  mean  lawlessness,  loose 
morals  and  free-love?  It  means  nothing  of 
the  kind.  It  is  a  statement  of  unfortunate 
conditions  which  are, — of  fortunate  conditions 
which  should  be, — and  of  the  spiritual  truth 
connected  with  them.  It  is  a  query  as  to  how 
this  truth  may  be  applied  to  the  conditions 
which  are,  so  that  they  may  be  turned  into 
those  which  should  be.  It  appeals  to  human 
beings  to  interest  themselves  in  Marriage,  the 
Reality,  and  to  abolish  the  masked  hideousness, 
Imitation.  It  is  a  hint  that  present  Laws,  the 
rigid  and  the  lenient,  concern  themselves  with 
the  wrong  element  in  the  matter;  that  bringing 

*This  part  is  added  in  the  second  edition.     J.  D.  M. 


MARRIAGE   LAWS.  83 


to  the  world  a  maximum  of  genuine  Marriage 
will  never  be  accomplished  by  Church  or  State 
with  Laws  as  to  who  may  or  may  not  unmarry. 
It  suggests  that  genuine  Marriage  will  be  gener- 
ated and  cherished  through  the  enforcement 
by  the  State,  and  the  giving  by  the  Church,  of 
Education  in  those  common  Marriage  princi- 
ples of  which  the  ignorant,  even,  may  be  taught 
a  sufficient  little,  and  the  intelligent,  a  satis- 
fying much;  also,  that  genuine  Marriage  will 
be  fostered  by  a  code  of  Laws  for,  not  the 
absolute  prevention  of  divorce,  but  for  the 
prevention  of  the  wrong  divorces,  by  means  of 
a  time  of  probation  required  of  each  applicant, 
during  which  the  quality  of  the  present  union 
shall  be  put  to  thorough  test;  these  Laws  to 
be  framed  and  carried  out  by  Boards  of 
Marriage,  which  every  State  shall  have,  as  it 
has  now  its  Boards  of  Health,  and  shall 
require  every  Church  to  have  for  the  instruction 
and  guidance  of  its  members. 

To  repeat,  that  all  who  care  to,  may  under- 
stand without  mistake : — 

Free- love  can  never  lead  to  Marriage.     Free- 


84  MARRIAGE. 


love  seeks,  rather  than  avoids,  wandering ; 
while  Marriage  lives  toward  the  growing  one- 
ness which  necessitates  permanence.  The  only 
preparation  for  the  genuine  Marriage  is  Educa- 
tion in  its  principles,  and  this  is  what  the  normal 
Laws  will  treat  of  when  normal  Laws  are 
made.  The  majority  of  the  unhappy  marriages 
are  so,  not  because  they  are  mistakes,  but 
because  those  in  them  do  not  know  the  need 
or  methods  for  finding  the  growing  oneness. 
With  those  marriages  turned  toward  the  true 
purpose,  the  small  minority  of  men  and  women 
who  are  in  mismated  unions  will  safely  be 
allowed  divorce  and  remarriage,  if  they  desire, 
without  endangering  the  general  welfare,  and 
indeed,  to  its  eternal  betterment. 

But,  Education  is  such  a  lengthy  process? 
No!    The  long  road  is,  Ignorance. 


<£4     o^C 


